Rules & fair play

1. Eligibility

• Open to current undergraduates of the University of Vavuniya from all faculties and all academic years.
• Every member gives their student ID, student email and mobile number at registration. A student ID can be used in one team only. Student cards are checked at check-in.
• Organising staff, judges and mentors may not compete.

2. Teams

• Teams have 3 to 4 members. Members may come from different faculties and years.
• A student can belong to one team per edition.
• One member creates an account and registers the whole team. One member is named team leader and is the primary contact; their phone number is verified by SMS. Details can be edited until registration closes, not after.
• Team names must be unique (capitals and spacing do not count) and appropriate. Organisers may ask you to rename.

3. Theme and selection

Registration is Open Innovation: solve a real problem for real people: each team picks one real problem of its own choosing, in any domain, and writes a short idea pitch. No prototype or code is needed to register.

The selection panel reads every registration and looks at how well the team understands the problem, whether the proposed approach is realistic, and whether the team has the skills to build it. Up to 20 teams are shortlisted, with a waitlist. If far more teams apply than there are places, closely placed teams may sit a short logic quiz, the same for everyone, as a tiebreaker. Finalists confirm their place from the dashboard, with each member’s meal type, certificate name and emergency contact, by the date shown there; otherwise the place passes to the waitlist.

Your pitch is seen only by your team and the organisers. The finale has its own theme and problem statements, unrelated to your pitch, which stay sealed until the opening ceremony.

4. Fair play

Allowed before the reveal: public boilerplates and starter kits, UI component libraries, and open-source libraries you published before the theme announcement.

Not allowed: any code, designs or data specific to the theme or problem written before the Vault opens; copying other teams’ work; submitting work by people outside the team.

• All work happens in the repository the platform creates for your team at the reveal, inside the AccroNex GitHub organisation.
• Teams upload progress checkpoints from the dashboard at set times during the day. Missing both checkpoints without a reason counts against the process score.
• Mentors and coordinators may inspect any machine and repository at any time.
• At the code freeze, repositories become read-only. Anything pushed after that is ignored.
• In the final pitch, judges may ask any member to walk through how any part of the product works and why you built it that way.
• Evidence of pre-built work or plagiarism leads to disqualification of the whole team and a ban from future editions.

5. AI tools

Use AI. We expect you to. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Cursor, Lovable, v0, Bolt and similar tools are allowed for everything: ideas, planning, code, tests, design, copy, debugging and your pitch. Prompting well is a skill this hackathon rewards, not a shortcut it punishes.

• Bring your own accounts and keys. Free tiers are fine; we don’t provide subscriptions.
• List the tools you used in your README. It is for the record, not a penalty.
• What is judged is the result and your understanding of it: any member may be asked to explain what the system does, how the pieces connect and why you made a choice. “The AI wrote it” is a fine start to an answer, not the whole answer.
• The fair-play rules above still apply: the problem is revealed at 08:00, so prompting an AI to build the solution before that is the same as writing it yourself before that.
• Keep your prompts, chats and generated code inside your own team. Don’t feed another team’s repository or pitch into a tool.

6. Judging

Default finale rubric, out of 100. The edition page shows any changes agreed with sponsors.

• 25 · Problem fit and impact
• 25 · Working prototype and technical quality
• 20 · Process: checkpoints, commit history, twist handling
• 15 · Innovation
• 15 · Pitch and build walkthrough

Judges’ decisions are final. Named sponsor awards use their own short criteria, published with the sponsors.

7. Conduct

The code of conduct applies to everyone at the venue and online. The hackathon runs on a single day, from check-in at 07:00 to the closing ceremony at about 21:00. You are responsible for your own health during the event.

8. Intellectual property

Your team owns what you build. By taking part you grant the organisers and sponsors a non-exclusive right to showcase your project name, description, screenshots and demo video for promoting AccroNex. Sponsored problem statements do not transfer any IP to the sponsor unless a separate agreement says so.

8. Changes

Organisers may adjust timings and details to run the event safely. Registered teams are told by email and on the dashboard.